(Closed) Why buy prints from the photographer?

Just wondering if there is a benefit to ordering prints directly from the photographer? I’ll be receiving a DVD of all the images so I will be able to order prints from any site I want. So is there a better quality or anything like that? Or should I just wait and print from my DVD?

Professional quality, additional retouching, consistancy, color accuracy… just to name a few things 🙂

There are some decent places for consumers to get prints from, just stay away from the “drugstore/supersote” photo labs. Those provide the most horrid reproductions. Go somewhere that only deals with photography (mpix.com is one) and you will get a much much better result. It won’t be a good as what you will get from your photographer, but it will be much closer that the drugstore labs hack jobs.

Photographers printing quality will be better, last longer and be more professional than any inkjet printers commonly found elsewhere. As a photographer I bring a comparison of an image printed by me vs an image printed at target to my clients and you can see the big difference. Also photographers can offer additional products like canvases or photobooks.

My daughter’s photographer gave her the photos on a DVD. The photos were in very large files because they were taken by a professional camera. When we had them printed, they asked us if we took the pictures. They wanted permission from the photographer to print them. It was just a hand written note they wanted

@petempich: We ship all of our discs with a personal print release included so that our clients will be able to get them printed at any lab they want. There is a distinction between a print release and copyright. Professional wedding photographers in the United States very very rarely relinquish copyrights to their clients, and if they do they charge extra for it. There’s a lot of misinformation on this forum about this.

In general prints from a photographer will be of higher quality, and higher color accuracy. You’re also supporting their business when you purchase them.

Pros usually have prints made at shops that are far better quality than the average consumer chooses. If you do print them yourself, make sure and at least use Mpix.com or Bay Roes (or similar/better). Shutterfly and CVS will not give you the results you are hoping for!

I’ve heard about them being better quality, but I’ve never seen a problem with the pictures I’ve printed from random photo places. I’d rather pay less money and print my own. My photographer gives us the DVD of full res images to do exactly that.

I think there are many different photographers and contracts out there and people should look for what they want and be willing to pay for what they want. They should understand what they will be getting before the wedding and it might not be the same as their friends. I really don’t think the photographer my daughter hired wanted to mess with the printing and mailing. That calls for some organization and he isn’t that kind of person and it was a good fit for us. So she paid him more for what he was good at.